Abby Michaelsen works to pass California Cancer Research Act
Abby Michaelsen, National Youth Advocate of the Year
May 18, 2011
It is an immense honor to be the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids’ National Youth Advocate of the Year! I am so excited to be in Washington to receive this award and to meet my fellow advocates who have been working tirelessly in their own communities on their tobacco prevention campaigns.
At home, I’m focused on helping my local American Heart Association with our campaign for the California Cancer Research Act. This act would increase the state’s tobacco tax by $1, with all the new funds going towards tobacco prevention and cessation programs and cancer research. Voters will decide the issue in the next statewide election, though the exact date of that is still uncertain.
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posted May 18, 2011
HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel takes on smokeless tobacco use in Major League Baseball
Editor
May 17, 2011
An all-star lineup of Major League Baseball notables including Brett Butler, a cancer survivor who played in the majors for 17 seasons, and ESPN analyst and former Mets manager Bobby Valentine, discuss the dangerous use of smokeless tobacco in baseball and its negative impact on young fans on HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel tonight.
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posted May 17, 2011
Philip Morris International chief's comment that tobacco is "not that hard to quit" only hints at company deception
Editor
May 12, 2011
Philip Morris International CEO Louis Camilleri made headlines at the PMI shareholders' meeting in New York on Wednesday, when he falsely claimed that "it's not that hard to quit" smoking cigarettes.
It was a revealing glimpse of the real Philip Morris at an event usually orchestrated to present the world's largest private tobacco company in the best light even as its products and practices spread death and disease worldwide.
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posted May 12, 2011
Cities and counties across Palmetto State are enacting smoke-free policies
Editor
May 12, 2011
Better health is winning against Big Tobacco — even in tobacco-growing South Carolina.
In the past two weeks, three more South Carolina cities — Atlantic Beach, Florence and Spartanburg — have approved smoke-free workplace ordinances that include restaurants and bars. That brings to 41 the number of smoke-free cities and counties statewide, protecting 34 percent of the state's population.
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posted May 12, 2011
Nepal enacts comprehensive tobacco-control law
Editor
May 10, 2011
Home to the world's tallest mountain, Nepal also has big ambitions for improving health: It has just enacted a tough, comprehensive tobacco-control law that requires smoke-free public places and workplaces, mandates pictorial health warnings covering 75 percent of tobacco packages, and bans tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorships.
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posted May 10, 2011
Encourage her to quit smoking for the gift of better health
Editor
May 6, 2011
Lung cancer — not breast cancer — is the leading cancer killer among women, and smoking causes 80 percent of these deaths.
So there's no better gift for Mom this Mother's Day than giving her the encouragement, support and information she needs to help her stop smoking.
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posted May 06, 2011
New Study: tobacco companies spiked cigarettes with diet aids to hook people worried about weight
Editor
May 4, 2011
It's been nearly a century since Lucky Strike first used the slogan "Reach for A Lucky Instead of A Sweet" and decades since the early Virginia Slims advertising campaign depicted women who smoke as independent, stylish, sexy — and of course slim — to market to women and girls.
But slogans and sophisticated images weren't the only tricks in the tobacco industry's scheme to keep people smoking.
According to a new study published in The European Journal of Public Health, the companies added appetite suppressants to cigarettes "to enhance the effects of smoking on appetite and body weight" — and to stoke smokers' fears of gaining weight if they quit.
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posted May 04, 2011
Editor
May 2, 2011
Health ministers meeting in Moscow last week declared that speeding up implementation of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is critical to addressing the growing threat from non-communicable diseases, which cause nearly two out of three deaths around the globe. They also called on more countries to ratify the pact.
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posted May 02, 2011
Historic Step to Reduce Tobacco's Huge Toll on Native Americans
Editor
Apr 29, 2011
Native Americans have the highest rates of smoking and other tobacco use of any population group in the United States.
So it was an historic step this week when Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly signed an executive order stating, "It is the policy of the Navajo Nation Executive Branch to establish a commercial tobacco free environment in all workplaces and public places within the Navajo Nation."
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posted April 29, 2011
WHO cites four key policies as critical to preventing "impending disaster"
Editor
Apr 28, 2011
Effective tobacco control policies are among the top 10 "best buys" that governments can implement to combat the growing threat from non-communicable diseases such as cancer, heart disease, chronic respiratory disease and diabetes, the World Health Organization says in its first worldwide report on such diseases.
Tobacco use is a risk factor for all of these illnesses — diseases that have now surpassed infectious disease as the leading cause of death worldwide and threaten "impending disaster" in some countries, according to WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan. The WHO released new figures showing that nearly 6 million people die from tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke each year. By 2020, that is expected to increase to 7.5 million — accounting for 10 percent of deaths across the globe.
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posted April 28, 2011
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